USA Science & Engineering Festival

Remember two years ago when I went to FEST in Trieste, Italy? (see pictures and coverage, e.g., this,this, this, this and more). Now nixed by Berlusconi who has other priorities than science, the FEST was one of the most exciting and famous science and technology events in the world. Sad that FEST is no more (at least temporarily), I am happy that a similar event will be held right here in the USA - the USA Science & Engineering Festival:

The Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival will be the country's first national science festival and will descend on the Washington, D.C. area in the Fall of 2010. The Festival promises to be the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the United States. The culmination of the Festival will be a two-day Expo in the nation's capital that will give over 500 science & engineering organizations from all over the United States the opportunity to present themselves with a hands-on, fun science activity to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

The festival will take place over two weeks, from October 10th till 24th, 2010, while the Expo on the National Mall will be on October 23th and 24th, 2010. It is organized by Larry Bock who organized a similar (and very successful) event in San Diego last year. You should read the press release (PDF) about it for more detail as well as look around the USA Science & Engineering Festival website.

There will be satellite events in many, many places in the USA. I am still a little confused, but there will be both a North Carolina Science Festival and the Triangle Science Festival with, I guess, some degree of coordination between the two. It's early, but I may get involved with one or both of these, at least reporting from the events on this blog and the Science In The Triangle site and blog.

I hope I can get involved in some aspect of the main event in D.C. Perhaps there may be a Science Communication Expo as a part of it at some date, where people and organizations can showcase both traditional and cutting-edge efforts in science publishing, communication, popularization and education, from Open Access online-only journals, to science blogging networks, social networking, new cool software, to more traditional magazines and books (books were a huge part of the Trieste FEST).

Leading to the event itself, there will be a number of events and contest. Perhaps you can enter the Kavli Science Video Contest or You CAN do the Rubik's Cube Tournament (more info here) and many more will be unveiled over the next few months.

I'll keep you posted as I get more information. But in the meantime, you should follow the Festival on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as on the blog (yes, hosted here on scienceblogs.com).